The invention relates to coin totalizer controls for controlling the operation of one or more coin sorter machines and for providing totals for the coins sorted by such machines.
The known prior coin sorting and counting equipment has been limited to counting and providing totals for denominations in a single national monetary system--U.S. coinage, for example. In such instances, neither the coin sorters nor the totalizer could process denominations from another country such as West Germany (the Federal Republic of Germany), for example.
There are several problems in providing sorting and counting equipment suitable for handling coins in different national monetary systems. First, the coins of the various countries are of different sizes and weights. Each size generally requires a separate sorting slot and an associated sensor for detecting coins passing through the slot. Second, coins are of different relative values to a base unit in other national monetary systems. For example, the U.S. penny is the equivalent of 0.01 of a U.S. dollar, but in West Germany, a coin such as the two-pfennig denomination is the equivalent of 0.02 of the German deutsche mark (DM), and is thus not related to the base unit of currency by the same decimal fraction.
Totalizers have some type of display for showing the accumulated monetary values of coins processed by a coin sorter. These have usually included a numeric display with some number of digits. Lighting elements have been added to the control to indicate the function being performed by the totalizer. Thus, if the totalizer shows a monetary value for nickels on its numeric display, an LED positioned elsewhere on the control has been illuminated next to a label for nickels. In the known totalizers it has not been possible to reassign such an LED to indicate a different denomination. The labels for the denominations have been fixed rather than interchangeable and the totalizers have been wired to operate each LED for a single assigned function.
The problem of physical adaptability to different sizes of coins is resolved by a coin sorter described in a copending application of Taipale et al, entitled "Coin Handling and Sorting", which has been filed concurrently herewith. This coin sorter provides slots that can be adjusted to different sizes of coins and also provides a greater number of slots than the number of denominations in the typical national monetary system. Even with such a sorter, however, prior totalizers would be unable to recognize denominations in more than one national monetary system. Such totalizers would also be unable to accumulate total values for various denominations in more than one monetary system. For example, if 571 dimes are counted, the total in the U.S. monetary system is $57.10. A totalizer accumulates this total by counting the number of coins while adding a value of 0.10 to the monetary total for each dime counted. But, a prior machine for counting U.S. coinage has not been controllable so as to assign a value of 0.02 to a particular denomination. Therefore, such machines could not be used to accumulate values for denominations such as the two-pfennig denomination mentioned above.
Some manufacturers have responded to this problem by adding read-only memories that are coded with the coin values of a selected national monetary system. This, however, has still resulted in an apparatus dedicated to counting coins in a single national monetary system. Also, the insertion or changing of these memories is a manufacturing or service operation and thus, the machine is not readily operable by a user for handling denominations outside a single national monetary system.